


Confession

by Calyps0



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Lots of Angst, One Shot, Other, quick scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 19:52:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17855900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: Quick musing - Leia's POV after the Resistance captures Kylo and she goes to interrogate him.





	Confession

And this, _this_ is the first time she’s seen him, since then—hadn’t been there when the light in her husband’s eyes had gone out, hadn’t witnessed her son’s descent into madness, hadn’t been there when the temple had burned, or when he had blasted dozens of rebel ships out of the sky, hadn’t seen the wreckage he had wrought on planet after planet—hadn’t witnessed any of this firsthand.

It’s hard to believe it was him—even after the stories—that the tall creature in the black mask wasn’t some different person entirely, that it wasn’t all some mistake, some cruel joke. And it had been easy to believe that, until she was finally in a room with him, sitting mere feet apart, him looking sullen and gaunt in the chair across from her, giving nothing away, keeping his emotions tightly coiled, a spring about to misfire.

She’s trying to keep her emotions in check, too, because when she walked into the room—almost with excitement, some indescribable joy that she knows she shouldn’t have, but still, _still,_ she’s going to see her son again, _finally_ —she hadn’t recognized him.

He looks like a stranger wearing the unruly black hair of her son – a cruel funhouse mirror to distort and pervert him. His face looks harsh and angular and his broad frame hums with some restless electricity. She sits across from him and their eyes meet, and she gasps at the rawness she sees in their dark depths, so unlike the wide and curious eyes of a child. A hint of recognition flickers like a flame in his face, but then it is gone.

How can this be the ruddy-faced boy she had borne, grown so lean and hard and bitter? A sturdy frame, no longer the slim and lanky child he’d been. A mouth that looks like it had never smiled, though she knows it has. A great slash bisects his face, staggers like a drunken man in a river of red. And even though she knows he deserves it, deserves the pain a thousand times over for his crimes, she feels a fierce protectiveness and anger at whoever has dared to hurt her child. Her heart feels heavy, and even though he is right there across from her, he feels so very far away.

_“Say something, please_ ,” she begs finally, because what else can she say? _Let me hear your voice_ , she thinks, _something else that has changed without my knowledge._ There is a pause, slow and awful, shivering and pale between them.

_“I don’t wish to bring you any more pain,”_ he says after a long while. She looks up at the voice, so startlingly soft, so very much like she remembers.

_“You can stop, you know_ ,” she points out gently, “ _bringing me pain, that is.”_ She should slap him, yell at him, something—he killed her husband for goodness sakes—but even though he has grown so broad, so tall, he looks so fragile he might fly apart at any second, and she’d never be able to put him back together again: a lost prince, a broken shell.

There is a long pause; she thinks he might have said all there is to say.

_“I wouldn’t know how.”_ He finally replies. “ _All I ever do…”_ He trails off and stares at his hands. She looks at them, too, tries to relearn him, one piece at a time.

_“All I ever do is hurt the people I care about.” He sighs heavily. “It’s all I’ve ever done.”_

Her heart breaks, and he breaks, too.


End file.
